Damn Brits, coming over here, killing our foxes

On February 18th the “ancient”* “sport” of fox-hunting will be made illegal in the United Kingdom.

Whenever I hear the murder of small, defenceless animals described as a sport, I think of that Gary Larson joke where there’s two sign-up sheets outside the Coliseum, one for Christians and one for lions.

Incidentally, how long before the new Imperial power starts throwing Muslims to indigenous fauves, or making them go a few rounds with The Rock? Sorry, just thinking aloud. Like most outward-looking, progressive types, I think partly in French.

If fox hunting was really a sport, Rupert Murdoch would have tied up the rights to it years ago. In the pre-hunt build-up, the fox would tell Gary Newbon how he’s evaded the hounds for eleven straight hunts and confident of extending his unbeaten run; then the hounds would look straight at the camera and say that they would love it - LOVE IT - if they could catch him and rip his innards apart, before getting a message in their earpieces saying that actually they were going to kill him humanely with a single bite to the neck.

Proponents of hunting say it’s a relatively humane way to deal with what’s generally perceived as being a nuisance. It’s a dangerous road to go down, particularly as there’s quite a few people in places like Bermondsey who’d be only too happy to chase immigrants down with packs of dogs.

Others claim that it gives them a connection to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, though many must wonder why they don’t roast their prey over a spit or why Tesco don't have a ‘quality’ range of fox-burgers.

They claim that there will be a loss of 15,000 jobs for horse and dog breeders, people who knit their shiny uniforms and the private security people they employ to beat up hunt saboteurs. Almost all of them vote for the Tory party which deliberately put 3 million people on the dole in the early eighties.

They claim that they really love the countryside, though most of them are big landowners who destroy ancient hedgerows in order to maximise yields. It’s an example of doublethink that would Orwell or Richard Perle blush.

Many hunters are going to respect the will of the democratic majority and the rule of law. Prince Charles is going to keep on hunting right up till February 17th, after that he’s liable to discover that being detained at her majesty’s pleasure means something other than being asked to stay for another cup of tea by mumsie.

Others promise civil disturbance while some warn that secret, illicit hunts will take place. This is what happened when the fuzz clamped down on raves, though it’s harder to see the aristos squeezing all those horses and dogs into the back of a hiace.

Criminologists claim that hunts will be hard to police. Why? As far as I’m aware the cops have horses too. They’re usually used to police urban events like football games and political marches, but it’s hard to imagine them protesting that they don’t want to get their hooves dirty. Could it be that the boys in blue are more sympathetic to the hunters than they were to, say the miners?

Personally I hope Tony Blair is just as brutally heavy-handed in dealing with the hunters as Thatcher was with the miners. I hope there’s clashes from which the Hooray Henry’s emerge with blood gushing from their faces. I hope there’s police cordons round the houses of those who threaten to defy the ban, and that ramblers, who may bear the brunt of the wrath of the privileged, will get their own police escorts. I hope that in twenty years time the cops will justify their strong-arm tactics by saying that these were dirty men who had no respect for the rule of law. But I’m not holding my breath.

Instead I’m worrying that they may come over to my own fair isle and hunt our foxes. Foxes aren’t indigenous to Ireland, they were brought over for the absentee landlords to have something to chase. In the Penal era any landlord could buy the horse of a catholic for a fiver, which meant that the hunt became the preserve of the Anglo-Irish landlord class, which it still is today. During the famine horses were kept well fed on peasant’s tithes while the peasants themselves starved. Yet when someone in the green party pointed this out, Anglo-Irish know-it-all Kevin Myers spent a whole vitriolic column ridiculing him.

But it’s Britain that’s banning the hunt first with modern, forward-thinking Ireland left lagging behind. This poses the spectre of hordes of British lords with marbles in their mouths coming over here, while pregnant teenagers make the opposite journey. There’s a complex grey area dealing with foxes who want to have abortions, as well they might with the hunt season coming up and the prospect of being chased by a pack of salivating hounds.

My fears were somewhat assuaged by a report that there are unlikely to be that many Brits coming over here, but for all the wrong reasons. Apparently the existing hunts are all over-subscribed, and the remaining free land is being converted into golf courses. This either means the Anglo-Irish aristocracy is alive and well or our own upper classes want to ape the ways of our former colonial masters, which isn't a unique development by any means.

So, while the Brits go over to Norway and train their horses and dogs to hunt whales (The ones that play water polo should be particularly adept, boom boom) it’s time that we followed their governments lead and banned this barbaric practice. Hopefully it won’t take seven years as it did in Britain, but we don’t have a house of lords (Thanks be to Jaysus!) and this would be a perfect opportunity for Red Ahern to nail his working-class colours to the mast.

If hunting is made illegal I hope the police adopt the same approach to dealing with illegal hunters as they did to the students at the Reclaim the Streets parade.

But once again, I won’t be holding my breath.

*For evidence that fox-hunting isn't all that ancient, see here